“What is it?” he demanded. “What have you lost?”
“My scenario! All my work gone!”
“The new story? My goodness, Ruth, it couldn’t have blown away!”
“But it has!” she wailed. “Not a scrap of it left. My notebooks—my pen! Why!” and she suddenly controlled her sobs, for she was, after all, an eminently practical girl. “Could that fountain pen have been carried away by the windstorm, too?”
“There goes a barrel through the air,” shouted Tom. “That’s heavier than a fountain pen. Say, this is some wind!”
The sound of the dashing rain now almost drowned their voices. It sprayed them through the porous shelter of the vines and latticework so that they could not sit on the bench.
Ruth huddled upon the table with Tom Cameron standing between her and the drifting mist of the storm. She looked across the rain-drenched yard to the low-roofed house. She had first seen it with a home-hungry heart when a little girl and an orphan.
How many, many strange experiences she had had since that time, which seemed so long ago! Nor had she then dreamed, as “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,” as the first volume of this series is called, that she would lead the eventful life she had since that hour.
Under the niggard care of miserly old Jabez Potter, the miller, her great uncle, tempered by the loving kindness of Aunt Alvirah Boggs, the miller’s housekeeper, Ruth’s prospects had been poor indeed. But Providence moves in mysterious ways. Seemingly unexpected chances had broadened Ruth’s outlook on life and given her advantages that few girls in her sphere secure.
First she was enabled to go to a famous boarding school, Briarwood Hall, with her dearest chum, Helen Cameron. There she began to make friends and widen her experience by travel. With Helen, Tom, and other young friends, Ruth had adventures, as the titles of the series of books run, at Snow Camp, at Lighthouse Point, at Silver Ranch, on Cliff Island, at Sunrise Farm, with the Gypsies, in Moving Pictures, and Down in Dixie.